


The Love of a Scarab is Complex

by The_Mouse_of_Anon



Series: Sweet Triad: We're Not That Complex [1]
Category: Blue Beetle (Comics), DCU, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Bart is so wildly pan, Evolving Relationship, Khaji Da coping with not having the mental framework to understand that he was in love, Multi, bluepulse OT3, character evolution, poly ship, poly ship involving an alien AI, smitten scarab is smitten, so many feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 02:59:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6886729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Mouse_of_Anon/pseuds/The_Mouse_of_Anon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Khaji Da didn’t know when he’d fallen in love with Jaime and Bart— but for everything he’d gained from it he was glad that he did.</p><p>A look at the evolution of Khaji Da's relationship with Jaime and Bart. Bluepulse OT3 sappiness in abundance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Love of a Scarab is Complex

**Author's Note:**

> When I started this I intended it to be relatively brief, just a small drabble. Instead the Khaji Da in my head had other plans. This fic is the result. I hope you enjoy the fluff. n.n

Khaji Da didn’t know when precisely he fell in love with Jaime and Bart. When did he shift from just being loyal to outright protective and smitten? True, his extreme loyalty to Jaime made sense being that Jaime was Khaji Da’s host, but it didn’t explain how strongly he wanted to protect Jaime— or Bart for that matter.

Logically it made sense that if Khaji Da was going to fall in love with anyone— which was entirely outside parameters, but Khaji Da didn’t care and really hadn’t cared for a while now— it would be Jaime. Jaime was his host. Jaime was the one he was attached to. Jaime was the one who shared his body with Khaji Da— his body and his senses (and at times those senses had proven intoxicating). Jaime was the one whose mind Khaji Da could ‘hear’ almost constantly. Jaime was the first one to force Khaji Da to speak; to think, question, and interact as an individual. Jaime was the one who had taught Khaji Da that he was more than his programming. Jaime was the one who had encouraged Khaji Da to _learn_.

In those early days when Khaji Da demanded answers for things he didn’t understand, Jaime treated those demands as the questions they were rather getting defensive. Somehow he’d known before Khaji Da that his demands were born from not _knowing_ any better rather than from arrogance or a desire to control. And, if anything, Jaime had _encouraged_ him to question, to wonder, to not take things at face value and ask _why_ things were the way they were. Khaji Da had learned a lot.

Jaime rubbed off on Khaji Da. Where Khaji Da’s questioning and overall communication had originally been clipped and brief, over time through speaking with Jaime he had become more relaxed. Khaji Da had developed a caustic wit, a finely tuned sense of sarcasm, and a sense of humor that he willingly showed rarely— and even then most often to either Jaime or Bart. The first time Khaji Da had said something completely ridiculous (“Let’s paint his nails.”) he’d said it without thinking, immediately feeling the slightest tinge of nervousness afterward only to be distracted as Parasite lunged at them again. In fact by the end of that ordeal Khaji Da had almost put his own bizarre comment out of mind, until Jaime remembered it and had an uncontrollable giggle-fit. After that Khaji Da had made up his mind to give in to the occasional impulse to say bizarre things; Jaime’s laugh was worth it. At that time Khaji Da had had no words for the warm and happy feeling that hearing Jaime laugh gave him. He just knew that Jaime being happy was a good thing.

And the questions, _oh the questions!_ So many deep conversations late at night, musing over the whys and hows of things, Khaji Da asking Jaime questions about him and his world, Jaime asking Khaji Da about him… Discussing gender had to have been one of the more convoluted and confused conversations the two of them had had. It eventually ended with the understanding that while gender was a confusing concept to Khaji Da that he didn’t quite _get_ (or really care about— referring to Khaji Da as ‘he’ or ‘him’ was more of a place-holder than anything), it was a concept that was very important to humans. For Khaji Da gender didn’t really apply, but thanks to Jaime he understood that it applied to almost all humans and getting it wrong could _hurt_ (part of how Jaime had gotten that across was by pointing out that for some humans getting misgendered hurt and felt as wrong to them as Khaji Da felt about being referred to as a ‘tool’).

Jaime had also gotten Khaji Da to question his own existence. Where before Khaji Da had never questioned why he did what he did, or the fact of his free will and consciousness, because of Jaime he had come to realize he was only limited in the ways he could think by what he was willing to imagine. Before Jaime, Khaji Da hadn’t really imagined anything— he’d been more focused dealing with what was happening in front of him and the seemingly simple equation of ‘true’ or ‘false’ in the world, ‘this’ or ‘that’, either/or. Thanks to Jaime he knew that multiple seemingly contradictory things could be true, even when the combination made no sense. He’d spent a good six weeks straight thinking that one through.

Khaji Da owed every last bit of freedom he had to Jaime, because without Jaime Khaji Da would never have been able to imagine something other than what he’d been programmed with. He would never have been able to re-write his programming, and he would never have been able to become the person he had become. Jaime had freed him. Jaime had freed him in a way that made Khaji Da able to be himself, to _have_ a sense of self, and to know that there were those who were _glad_ that he was a person with independent thoughts and dreams. No, it wasn’t hard to see why Khaji Da had fallen in love with Jaime, it was just hard to pinpoint when it had happened.

Then there was Bart. Bart, like Jaime, was everything that Khaji Da hadn’t known he needed. When Bart had first shown up Khaji Da found him annoying; the way he seemed to be in constant motion, flitting from here to there from moment to moment, the way he seemed to find almost any excuse possible to spend time with Jaime and stay glued to his side without touching, and the way he lied through his teeth as easily as breathing before he came clean and was honest about why he was in the past all drove Khaji Da to pure frustration. Before Bart Khaji Da had never really been _mad_. He hadn’t known he _could_ feel mad. It was a bit of evidence that Khaji Da had used to prove to himself that he _was_ a person— and in an odd way that had made him appreciate Bart’s antics and inclined him to be more tolerant of Bart than he would have otherwise. 

Then Bart came clean. When Bart admitted why he’d gone to the past— that he was trying to keep Jaime from going on mode— Khaji Da felt like the entire world had been yanked out from under him. He reassessed everything. Bart went from being ‘the random annoyance’ to ‘the one who abandoned everything he’d ever known to save Jaime’ in Khaji Da’s mind. Khaji Da found out that the Reach were the biggest threat to them all and quickly realized two things: 1) Jaime was threatened and that was _unacceptable_ in the extreme, and 2) Bart warned them, Bart was working to protect Jaime, therefore it made sense to protect Bart in order to protect Jaime. It was a line of reasoning Khaji Da hadn’t notified Jaime of at the time.

The way that entire ordeal worked out, and the fact that Jaime and Khaji Da had been freed from the Reach thanks to Bart’s help (and the rest of the team, but for Khaji Da it was primarily Bart), Khaji Da came to have a much higher tolerance for Bart. Khaji Da stopped feeling paranoid when Bart touched Jaime. He even started to relax when Bart was near them because he knew Bart would protect Jaime if something unexpected happened. Then Jaime and Bart started dating and Khaji Da found out that he was capable of another emotion he hadn’t thought possible— Khaji Da felt jealous. Again, he hadn’t had words to explain what he was feeling, because it had been beyond his original parameters, but Khaji Da knew that for a while any time Jaime and Bart were flirting, cuddling, kissing, _anything_ , he felt a surge of frustration and an overwhelming desire to keep Jaime to himself.

That eventually led to a long late-night talk. Jaime didn’t think it was fair. Jaime wanted to live his life, and while he was sharing his body with Khaji Da and had no problem with that, for him part of living his life meant dating someone if he wanted to. Jaime at least had made the suggestion that if Khaji Da really couldn’t stand someone that he’d break it off and wouldn’t date them. Because he was jealous Khaji Da didn’t like it, but at the same time he wanted Jaime to be happy. Jaime being happy was a good thing. So he agreed. And because Khaji Da already trusted Bart the most out of anyone else and it was Bart that Jaime was dating, the idea of having Jaime break it off with Bart to only end up trying to date someone Khaji Da didn’t trust made Khaji Da extremely uncomfortable. In a very real sense he resigned himself.

For a long time he ignored their interactions, shutting off his access to Jaime’s senses and buried himself in looking up random information online (ranging over everything from new weapon concepts to a rather bizarre website known as PeepResearch.org once) any time they were clearly going to be ‘involved’. Eventually Khaji Da’s jealousy began to fade. He began to appreciate hearing Bart’s laugh, seeing him smile, and it started to give him the same warm feeling he got whenever Jaime laughed or was happy. And then Khaji Da started getting _curious_. And when Khaji Da turned to Jaime to answer his questions like he always did, Jaime invited him to pay attention rather than ignoring them and finding out whether or not he liked what they were doing himself. Khaji Da did. He watched. He observed. He didn’t quite get it, but he knew that making out, cuddling, and everything else he hadn’t paid attention to previously made them happy. And because Jaime had always encouraged him to question everything, to follow his curiosity and learn, Khaji Da didn’t leave it at that. Jaime invited him to up their integration level, to go from 70% to 75%, to sink himself into Jaime’s senses in a way he hadn’t before, and to then decide if he liked what they did.

It was like the world opened up for Khaji Da, like he’d gone from being able to see in mostly gray-tones to a world bursting with bright and vibrant color, and suddenly the feelings he’d had for both Jaime and Bart fell into place and _made sense_. At first he didn’t know what to do with it. He watched, he observed, he _felt_ — and if that didn’t throw his entire way of processing the world into disarray nothing else would. He hadn’t known that Jaime’s senses could feel so good, that the _pleasure_ Jaime felt could feel so indescribably _perfect_ , and for a good few months he just had no idea what to do about it. He hadn’t thought he was capable of falling in love, and by immersing himself so thoroughly in Jaime’s senses and Jaime’s pleasure through those senses, he was suddenly and thoroughly aware of the fact that he wasn’t falling in love— he’d _been_ in love for a while and hadn’t realized it. He didn’t know what to do about it. And when he finally went to Jaime about it like he always did, he didn’t know what to expect. For the first time he didn’t know how Jaime would react, if Jaime would accept his love or not, and he was scared and embarrassed about being scared. And Jaime knew. Jaime knew, had known, had known that Khaji Da loved him, and had just waited for Khaji Da to figure it out— accepting him without question. The relief had been indescribable. 

And then several days afterward Jaime, at Khaji Da’s request, told Bart. Again, Khaji Da had felt nervous; again he’d felt scared, worried that he’d be rejected— and Bart broke out with a smile that made Khaji Da feel so loved and wanted that it was dizzying and it seemed impossible that he could have ever lived in a world where the idea of being loved hadn’t occurred to him. Khaji Da almost hadn’t even heard what Bart had said, and when he processed it he felt flustered, flattered, wanted, and so many other things he just couldn’t put words to. “No, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Why would I have a problem with it? I love both of you! And besides, do you have any idea how unbelievably hot the idea of getting not one, but _two_ people off _at the same time_ is?” For the first time in his long existence Khaji Da hadn’t known how to respond.

Bart taught Khaji Da that he was desirable, that he was beautiful, attractive, and stunning. He taught him in the way he admired Khaji Da, running his hands over the armor. Bart taught Khaji Da that it was possible for someone to look at his and Jaime’s armored form and see more than just the implied danger. He taught him in the way he’d curl close, bury his face in his neck, and run his vibrating hands over Khaji Da’s wings in a way that made Khaji Da’s eyes almost roll back in bliss. Bart also taught him that someone could hear Reach words falling from his borrowed lips and find the words sexy beyond description. The first time it happened it had driven Bart so wild that almost everything but the feel of Bart and pleasure had been blotted out of Khaji Da’s awareness. Because of it Jaime and Bart had coined the phrase “Reach-speak hot,” a phrase which often left Khaji Da feeling flustered and flattered. If his wings were out and that phrase were uttered, Khaji Da couldn’t help the involuntarily wing-flutter; which eventually Jaime dubbed the ‘scarab blush.’ That Bart would invariably be tempted to run those wonderful hands over his wings didn’t help (and Bart knew it).

Jaime and Bart both made Khaji Da feel loved and wanted, and they both made him feel that he was where he _belonged_. ‘Love’ had been outside his original parameters, so he didn’t know when precisely he’d fallen in love. The sort of relationship he had with Jaime and Bart was a concept completely foreign to the Reach, so as his feelings had developed he had no way to frame what was going on in his mind. The sort of whole-hearted acceptance they gave him had never even occurred to him as a possibility before he’d met either of them. The idea of being wanted and having a home, while originally foreign, was something he never wanted to live without again. If being loved was a dream, it was a dream Khaji Da never wanted to wake from.

Khaji Da didn’t know when he’d fallen in love with Jaime and Bart— but for everything he’d gained from it he was glad that he did.


End file.
